CLAUDE SIMON: JARDIN DES PLANTES
Target group: Master Komposition & Master Theaterpädagogik & Schauspiel & Master Tonmeister*innen & MA Lehramt Musik ISS Gym & open for Studium Generale
Daniel Ott, Enrico Stolzenburg, Saemi Jeong, José Luiz Perdigón, Eneko Lacalle
Guests: Jessica Ekomane (sound art), Regina Teichs (video art), Cord Riechelmann (biology and philosophy), Malte Ubenauf (dramaturgy), Gabriel Rodriguez (dramaturgy).

Registration: until 15.6.2026 at contact_ @klangzeitort.de.

About
Claude Simon (1913–2005), winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, was a leading figure in the so-called Nouveau Roman movement, renowned as a master of the richness, beauty, and chaos inherent in the structures of human memory as depicted in literature. A single personal (war) experience served as the inspiration for a unique body of literary work, ranging from the novel *The Streets of Flanders* (1960), with which Simon achieved early fame, to his final work, *The Tramway* (2002). Especially in recent decades, the significance of memory and memory constructions in art has increasingly come to the forefront in the arts and sciences due to their political and social importance for visions of the future that extend far beyond the realm of aesthetics—hence also a thoroughly critical re-examination of Simon’s multifaceted work.

Claude Simon described his novel "Jardin des Plantes" (1997) as a “portrait d’une mémoire,” or “portrait of a memory.” Rather than a linear narrative structure, the text unfolds as a multifaceted kaleidoscope of diverse fragments of thought and memory. At the center is the description of a traumatic wartime experience on May 17, 1940, in Flanders. This description is interrupted and supplemented by a ceaseless stream of associations that move freely, unbound by space or time, across the various continents and decades of the 20th century: accounts of journeys to postcolonial India, to the former Soviet Union, to the Japanese Emperor. Memories of the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936. Biographical elements: childhood memories, a Catholic boarding school, escape from the Mühlheim/Elbe prisoner-of-war camp, the Resistance in southern France. Connections to literary quotations from Marcel Proust (“In Search of Lost Time”), Dostoevsky (“The Brothers Karamazov,” among others), Gustave Flaubert, and Joseph Conrad. And much like the eponymous “Jardin des Plantes” in Paris attempts to tame the wildness of nature, Claude Simon arranges the fragments of memory into a large-scale literary composition.

In this multi-part course, we aim to examine the compositional techniques in “Jardin des Plantes” in greater detail and, through our collective engagement with these techniques and themes, develop a collaborative composition comprising texts, images, associations, and sounds. The goal is to create a music-theater installation that will be performed in November against the winter landscape surrounding the Sauen/Brandenburg community center. The preparatory team of students and faculty from the UdK will be joined by guests from outside the UdK, who will enrich the individual phases of the project’s development with their expertise on topics including the complete works of Claude Simon, botanical gardens, and decolonial perspectives.

For further information and to register for the overall project or individual project phases, please contact contact_ @klangzeitort.de by June 15 at the latest.

Time & Dates
Thursday, June 11, 2026, 4:00–6:00 p.m., Bundesallee 1-11, Room 310, Planning and information meeting
Tuesday, July 7, 2026, 5:00 p.m. to Saturday, July 11, 2026, 10:00 a.m., Sauen/Brandenburg Community Center: Conceptualization phase
Monday, November 2, 2026, 4:00 PM through Monday, November 9, 2026, 12:00 PM, Sauen/Brandenburg Community Center: Rehearsal and performance phase
Sunday, November 8, 2026, 3:00–8:00 PM, public performance in Sauen

Credits
2 SWS, 2 ECTS for Studium Generale, ECTS for the master’s program in accordance with the regulations for the degree programs

Literature
Claude Simon: „Le Jardin des plantes”
Claude Simon: “La route des Flandres”
Claude Simon: “Le Tramway”